Jordan's First Blog

For my unit plan, I decided to do a poetry unit. I felt confident in integrating other subject areas as well as poetry itself. The good thing about poetry is there are so many good examples of it in literature. When students read poetry and are read poetry by their teacher, writing poetry becomes easier and more exciting because they've already seen some examples. The following are 10 books I could use in my poetry unit to have a positive influence on student learning. It's Raining Pigs and Noodles By Jack Prelutsky This book is a great way for children to see how poetry can be used simply for humor. It's raining pigs and noodles, among many other things. Jack Prelutsky uses rhyming and good, even flow. I believe it would inspire students to write something humorous--we all know how funny kids are!   In I Got the Rhythm by Connie Morrison, a girl and her mother on her way to the park but the daughter is just feeling. the. beat. She hears music everywhere! From the b...

Oh, lesson planning. This is actually my favorite part of teaching because I love coming up with meaningful, exciting things for my students to do. However, I always seem to get overwhelmed or not know where to start when I'm being graded for my lesson plans. It's like a cloud comes over my creativity and blocks all my ideas. These lesson plans have been particularly hard because of everything going on in my personal life. I sit down and not only is my creativity gone but my will to do anything right now is gone. Pain medicine leaves me sleeping most of the day, which isn't really ideal when you're enrolled in full time college and trying to get caught up on finances and in other classes. I started out my lesson planning by first, choosing my grade. I really enjoy working with the younger students, so I decided to do 1st grade. I would like to student teach in first grade so I thought it would also be nice to become more familiar with the standards. I chose my unit ba...

Jordan Caring, forgiving, loving, and thankful Little sister of Jonathan and Jaymie Lover of God, animals, and people Who feels blessed with the things I have, excited to be a teacher, and ready for the future Who fears heights, spiders, and never carrying children Who would like to see more love and less hate, less judgement, and someday the world Resident of Columbia, Missouri Burford My favorite term introduced this chapter is interdisciplinary instruction. Essentially, this is the act of integrating reading and writing into all other subject areas. I think we should all strive to do this daily. Students gain so much knowledge from reading and writing; they gain empathy, the ability to focus, and improves vocabulary and language skills. There are so many different ways you can incorporate reading and writing into other subject areas. There are the basic ways, such as reading directions and writing down answers to questions. But what are ways you can think of...

During the first class, we went over future assignments and discussed our memories of language arts growing up and books that influenced us.When it comes to memories of language arts in elementary school, all I remember is liking it. I loved reading. I loved writing. I read so much when I got to first grade that my teacher had me start reading those basal reader-textbooks. The big ones with the long stories and comprehension questions afterwards. We never really used them as a class, but boy did I read like 7 different ones from front to back. I just loved reading and would work as fast as I could to finish reading before we moved onto the next thing. I think this is why other subjects came so easily for me, especially writing. I feel like when you read, your brain is able to learn other things easier. This is why I want to be a kindergarten or first grade teacher--I think reading has such a huge impact on how students learn. This last year working in an elementary school, I really t...